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YouTube of Ryuichi Sakamoto and his wife Akiko Yano playing an old YMO standard together at the piano. Back in the day I couldn't get my sophisticated record collecting friends interested in YMO or Sakamoto. They just couldn't go there. I'm glad to see that people are still discovering them/him through the Net or what have you. [/self pitying reminiscence]
What I'm listening to now: Barbara Morgenstern. The Grass Is Always Greener, Nichts Muss, Fjorden are the ones I've heard. Kind of Slapp Happy-era Dagmar Krause meets To Rococo Rot but an original songwriter as interested in texture as tonality. The "transposition queen"--you never know where her key and chord changes within a song are going to take you, but it's not meandering, it's completely focused and intentional. Lyrics in English and German, alternating.
Attack of the Clones, Part 5
Klaus Mosettig (born 1975), Processual Minimalism, 2006, a colony of forest ants constructing a hill. (via VVork)
From The Lives of a Cell, by Lewis Thomas, 1974:
A gallery in New York exhibited a collection of 2 million live army ants, on loan from Central America, in a one-colony show entitled "Patterns and Structures." They were displayed on sand in a huge square bin, walled by plastic sides...Previous clones
[...]
I learned that the army ants had all died.
[...]
There was no explanation, beyond the rumored, unproved possibility of cold drafts in the gallery over the weekend. Monday they were moving sluggishly, with less precision, dully. Then, the death began, affecting first one part and then another, and within a day all 2 million were dead...
[...]
It is a melancholy parable. I am unsure of the meaning, but I do think it has something to do with all that plastic--that, and the distance from the earth.
Attack of the Clones, Part 4
Steven Read, Please Wait, 2005 (via VVork)
Cory Arcangel’s Panasonic TH42PV60EH Plasma Screen Burn, 2007 (also via VVork)
Bonus: Nominee for Worst Theoretical Justification for an Artwork in 2007
from T.Whid:
Arcangel’s "Panasonic TH42PV60EH Plasma Screen Burn" is brash and bold, it says "fuck you, I’m fucking up this expensive piece of equipment. Why? Because I’m motherfucking Cory Arcangel that’s why!" Steven Read's piece is nitpicky and fussy. His piece says “look! I wrote a program to destroy an obsolete piece of hardware. Why? Because I’m a geek." Arcangel’s piece is about fucking with consumer dreams. Read's piece is about… time and phosphors?I would personally like to see Arcangel going back to destroying obsolete pieces of hardware instead of acting like a jaded rock star. I know some artists who could do some cool things with that plasma screen. (Also, we're taking it on faith that the screen is actually destroyed--in any case, if the gallery sells it, it's contractually tied up as an expensive name plate, which is practically the same thing.)
Previous clone attacks
Aron Namenwirth did a studio visit today, and took some nice photos, which are here.
The issue came up about people in the art world saying, regarding exhibits, "Yeah, I saw the show, I saw it on the Internet." Should galleries not post documentation so people will get off their lazy butts and come to see actual work? Cory Arcangel also addresses this matter in a transcription of a recent talk he gave, but from the reverse vantage point--he describes work he's seen on the Internet to people sitting in "real space" without a computer as an audiovisual aid. [Update: a friend noted that I am completely wrong about this--it reads like a transcription but appears to be some kind of stream of consciousness typing about the internet, to be read on the internet, but where no links are used.]
I'd been putting off the list of "art YouTubes" he and Hanne Mugaas recently published due to general leeriness of "art about art" and it feeling too much like homework. Certainly one could live without ever seeing the Italian Vanessa Beecroft interview again, but there are bad boy surprises lurking in the roster, too, such as this tribute to Barbara Kruger.
Generation - Artist Unknown
From Yahoo News/AFP:
Cheney...used his appearance before the Republican Jewish Coalition in Manalaplan, Florida, to reassure allies that the current political struggle [the House "antiwar" vote] will not result in a precipitous US withdrawal from Iraq.The vast majority of combatants in Iraq are not jihadists but Sunnis and/or (secular) Baathists who were kicked out of power when the US invaded. Cheney is taking advantage of Americans' ignorance and apathy regarding these basic facts to continue to spread fear.
"A sudden withdrawal of our coalition would dissipate much of the effort that has gone into fighting the global war on terror, and result in chaos and mounting danger," the vice president declared. "And for the sake of our own security, we will not stand by and let it happen."
He did not explain what steps the administration could take if the supplemental bill dies in partisan bickering. But he expressed confidence in the final outcome, stating "We will complete the mission, and we will prevail."
Quoting extensively from Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, the vice president reiterated his conviction that an US early withdrawal from Iraq would be "a complete validation of the Al-Qaeda strategy."
And he painted a dire picture of the Muslim world descending into chaos and tyranny, if radical Islamists were allowed to prevail.
"Having tasted victory in Iraq, jihadists would look for new missions," he predicted. "Many would head for Afghanistan and fight alongside the Taliban. Others would set out for capitals across the Middle East, spreading more sorrow and discord as they eliminate dissenters and work to undermine moderate governments."
This image from a stylish utopian architectural scheme proposed in Sweden comes via the VVork site. It reads like satire:
Kymlinge was a research and consultation project on new ways of developing towns in Sweden. We proposed a model of simulated organic growth, in part inspired by strategy and RPG games: We would start by installing low cost raw "industrial" spaces that would attract young people with the ikea energy to fix them up. This demographic would start-up a new area of Stockholm, creating at first a solution to the housing problem, and leading into the area gradually becoming a "cool" destination inside the city.The planned community (assuming this isn't a hoax) is essentially just a Levittown, Reston VA or Disney Celebration for these imaginary loft-living hipsters. Note that the words industrial and cool are in scare quotes. The equation of Ikea consumption and a counterculture is very slippery: the assumption is that if you give an energetic young person a non-traditional, urban, loft space, creativity and a happenin' scene will follow, but you can't always make the prisoners dance in their cells.
The computer designs are intriguing in a Donald Judd, Sol LeWitt open cube variation sense. I had an earlier version of this post up relating them to musical scores (mine, but never mind). The project appeals more as art than as social policy, which seems unnecessarily Skinnerian and manipulative.
